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Sony News
Because the news from Sony may continue to be protracted, we've created this page to help keep you abreast of all the latest release information. The most current will be at the top (the oldest will be at the bottom): ---- 'May 7, 2011' We wanted to let you know that our games will not be up this weekend. We are working around the clock to get our services back up and running soon. Thank you for your continued patience and support. ---- 'May 5, 2011 - Playstation Info Release' Important Step for Service Restoration + Posted by Patrick Seybold // Sr. Director, Corporate Communications & Social Media *Today our global network and security teams at Sony Network Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment began the final stages of internal testing of the new system, an important step towards restoring PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. *As previously mentioned, we’ve been working around the clock to rebuild the network and enhance protections of your personal data. It’s our top priority to ensure your data is safe when you begin using the services again. *We understand that many of you are eager to again enjoy the PlayStation Network and Qriocity entertainment services that you love, so we wanted you to be aware of this milestone and our progress. We will provide additional updates as soon as we can. ---- 'May 5, 2011 - 7:00pm' Unfortunately, we are unable to bring SOE services back online today. We regret the downtime. ---- 'May 5, 2011 - 2:29am' Sony: Anonymous Didn’t Hack Us, But Made It Easy After initially going on the record stating that Anonymous, the evangelist hacker group, had no involvement in the actual hack of the PlayStation Network (and by extension the SOE network), Sony have now pointed the finger for a different reason. In a letter to congress, Sony has posited that the very disruptive flooding/attacks on Sony servers in retaliation for the George Hotz lawsuit was a sufficient distraction to leave a much larger window for hackers to enter Sony systems and leave undetected. Sony has suggested that had the coordinated denial-of-service attacks not happened, a compromise of their servers would have been more easily detected and possibly thwarted. From BBCNews: *Sony has blamed the online vigilante group Anonymous for indirectly allowing the security breach that allowed a hacker to gain access to the personal data of more than 100m online gamers. *In a letter to the US Congress, Sony said the breach came at the same time as it was fighting a denial-of-service attack from Anonymous. *Denial-of-service attacks take servers down by overwhelming them with traffic. *The online vigilante group has denied being involved in the data theft. *Sony said that it had been the target of attacks from Anonymous because it had taken action against a hacker in a federal court in San Francisco. *In the letter to members of the House Commerce Committee, Kazuo Hirai, chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment America, defended the way that his company had dealt with the breach. *Sony discovered a breach in its Playstation video game network on 20 April but did not report it to US authorities for two days and only informed consumers on 26 April. *“Throughout the process, Sony Network Entertainment America was very concerned that announcing partial or tentative information to consumers could cause confusion and lead them to take unnecessary actions if the information was not fully corroborated by forensic evidence,” the letter said. ---- 'The Consumerist Release' Security Expert: Sony Knew Its Software Was Obsolete Months Before PSN Breach From: The Consumerist In congressional testimony this morning, Dr. Gene Spafford of Purdue University said that Sony was using outdated software on its servers — and knew about it months in advance of the recent security breaches that allowed hackers to get private information from over 100 million user accounts. According to Spafford, security experts monitoring open Internet forums learned months ago that Sony was using outdated versions of the Apache Web server software, which “was unpatched and had no firewall installed.” The issue was “reported in an open forum monitored by Sony employees” two to three months prior to the recent security breaches, said Spafford. ---- 'May 5, 2011' Some players have asked for updates every 12 hours from SOE, even if it’s just to report there has been no new progress. If this was you, well here you go with an SOE Facebook update from about 2 hours ago: We regret that we were unable to bring services back online today, and continue to work hard on the issue! ---- 'May 4, 2011 - 1:51pm' Sony’s Response to the U.S. House of Representatives Today, the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing in Washington, DC on “The Threat of Data Theft to American Consumers.” *Kazuo Hirai, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sony Computer Entertainment America, submitted written answers to questions posed by the subcommittee about the large-scale, criminal cyber-attack we have experienced. We wanted to share those answers with you. * Complete 8 page written response (click here) on Flickr * Summary on PlayStation Blog (click here) *Note that much of this information is generic to the PSN (SCEA) and SOE data breaches. Look for SOE and Sony Online Entertainment in the text of these letters if you wish to locate passages relevant to your game network. ---- 'May 4, 2011 ' We want to thank you again for your patience as we work to get the SOE services back up and running. We received several questions and comments relating to the criminal attack to our network and would like to address some of the most common questions today. We are also going to continue to post updates to this website with new information as they become available. We appreciate your continued patience and feedback. Thank you, Sony Online Entertainment When will SOE's services be back online? We have been working around the clock to restore operations as quickly as possible, and we expect to have some of our games and services up and running soon. However, we want to be very clear that we will only restore operations when we believe that the network is secure. How is the SOE intrusion related to the PSN/Qriocity intrusion? Was this a second attack on SOE? While the two systems are distinct and operated separately, given that they are both under the Sony umbrella, there is some degree of overlap in design. The attacks were similar in nature. This is NOT a second attack; new information has been discovered as part of our ongoing investigation into the criminal attack in April. How is SOE planning to notify customers whose data may have been stolen? We are sending out customer service notification emails to the email addresses we have on file for the accounts that were affected. These emails will be sent by Innovyx, our third party email distributor, and will contain either 'soe.innovyx.net' or 'soe.sony.com' in the sender field. SOE initially thought no data was extracted, what changed? Essentially the perpetrators used sophisticated means not only to access the data, but also to cover their tracks. We committed to continue the investigation and in doing so, uncovered further information that we did not have when we initially believed the data was not stolen. ---- 'May 3, 2011 - 8:30pm' Hey folks, in response to many inquiries, we wanted to reassure you that all of your characters and items are safe and awaiting your return. We continue to work on the issues as fast as we can, but unfortunately the servers will not come up today. Thank you for your continued patience; we expect to be back up very soon'.' ---- Phishing E-Mails - First Wave of Phishing E-mails In the Field — Ignore Them! SOE Customers have started to report receiving e-mails from unscrupulous individuals attempting to lure frustrated players to websites which look and feel like official SOE customer portals to try to acquire additional login credentials and credit card information. Please check the sender of these e-mails and further watch the addresses linked in any suspicious e-mail. When in doubt, go to http://www.SOE.com/ and disregard any links provided in outgoing e-mails. There is currently no “action” that players can take other than to wait-and-see how SOE and Sony address the current crisis. ---- 'May 3, 2011 - 3:00pm' We're working as hard as we can to get the servers up as soon as possible, but have no ETA at this time. (SOE’s Facebook Update as of 30 minutes ago is brief and to the point) ---- 'May 2, 2011 - 8:00am' Dear valued SOE customers: We had to temporarily take down SOE services during the night (5/1/2011). In the course of our investigation into the intrusion of our systems, we have discovered an issue that warrants enough concern. ---- 'May 1, 2011' This is from May 1st but due to some requests we’ve gotten about whether Sony will reimburse customers for any bank-related costs due to the security breach, we thought it was worth highlighting. From FeedTheGamer: *In this morning’s news conference, Sony Computer Entertainment head Kazuo Hirai said the company would consider covering costs associated with reissuing credit cards to PlayStation Network subscribers who feel their accounts have been compromised by the massive data breach of April 20. *Hirai, noting that there have been no confirmed incidents in which fraud was committed with a credit card number stolen from the PSN breach, said the company has asked the FBI for a criminal investigation of the matter. *While there are 77 million accounts in the PlayStation Network, some are are held by the same household or person. Hirai said the owners of 10 million PSN accounts have been notified that their credit card information may have been compromised. However, the three-digit CVV number on the back of the card, required for purchases over the Internet, was definitely not compromised. *The replacement of a lost or stolen credit card is typically done for a customer for free, but to banks there is a cost of printing, processing and mailing the cards, plus a cost of lost business while the customer waits for a new one. Earlier in the week, news reports pegged the transactional costs of card replacement at between $3 and $5 per card. It’s unclear who Sony would compensate, if it does, or if enough cardholders will ditch their cards to make it an issue that banks complain about to Sony. ---- Category:Browse Category:News